


My life as a Weapon

by neversaydie



Series: All My Own Stunts [2]
Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bipolar Disorder, M/M, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-29
Updated: 2014-05-29
Packaged: 2018-01-27 01:21:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1709813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neversaydie/pseuds/neversaydie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint wakes up screaming.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My life as a Weapon

_The tesseract starts pulsing and alarms scream out all over the lab._

_Clint keeps his perch._

_The buildings above them are being evacuated, he knows that by the time the third alarm goes off. He's focused on the mission, on the small figures of Dr Selvig and his team that are scurrying around like ants below him. They knew this was dangerous from the word go, and surprise isn't etched on a single face as the levels of something-or-other-that-sounds-ominous spike again._

_Clint's focused on the mission, but he's not thinking about it._

_He's thinking about that morning. It was rare that he and Phil got to spend much time together on-site, and he'd specifically requested this detail rather than be sent off to Kosovo, or wherever the latest crisis was. For the last two weeks he'd woken up next to his partner in the mornings, made Phil coffee, and kissed him goodbye before he'd gone back to work. It was the closest thing to normal they'd ever had._

_That morning had been a little different. He'd made Phil's coffee and kissed him softly as always, but he'd let his partner sleep. Phil had been up late the night before, writing reports long after Clint had got off shift. Clint had fallen asleep to the clicking of his keyboard, soothed by the familiar sound. So he hadn't woken Phil that morning, had kissed slack lips gently and closed the door quietly behind him on his way out so he wasn't disturbed._

_And now he probably won't get another chance to see the man he loves alive._

_He can feel the ring around his neck, on the same chain as his dog-tags. It feels heavier when there's a crisis, when there's something going on that threatens him going back to the man who put it on his finger. And Clint's not sure why his gut tells him this, but this time he's really, truly starting to think that his number's up. He just hopes Phil gets evacuated off-base in time, because from the way the scientists are talking, this thing isn't going to hold much longer before emergency protocol kicks in and they're all buried._

_Clint wonders which they'll end up identifying him by: the ring or the tags._

_He lays a hand over his chest and feels the little ridge with his palm, his fingers, his chest beneath it. Sending up a silent prayer that Phil's going to make it out of this. Floors above him, Phil does the same. He shifts a hand under his tie while he's giving orders, just long enough to feel the matching ring around his neck. Just long enough to hope that somehow, however impossible it seems, Clint makes it out alive._

_Then they're both back in the moment. Because they're in love and terrified but they're professionals, first and foremost. They have a job to do and they'll do it until they don't have breath anymore._

_Phil makes it out. Clint –_

 

Clint wakes up screaming.

His world is tinged blue and shards of ice shred his veins from the inside out. He doesn't realise the noise is coming from him until it stops, his throat torn ragged. He's hyperventilating and shaking so hard his teeth chatter, and he doesn't even register Phil until he's been trying to get through to him for a while. He's sitting upright, curled in on himself like he's trying to hide.

"Clint. Clint, sweetheart."

There's a hand on his back that feels so warm it almost burns him. Everything was cold, with Loki. Cold and ice and no sleep or food or-

"Clint, come on. Come back to me, you're safe."

Clint finally takes a decent breath when Phil's words break through the icy wall around his mind, and his partner breathes a sigh of relief behind him. He hasn't had nightmares like this for a long time, and they always scare the hell out of Phil.

"C-Cold." Clint stutters out, and Phil nods. That's all he needs to know exactly what the other man has been dreaming about.

If it's the past that's haunting Clint, it'll be _Barney_ or _sword_. If it's work, a country or city or even a quiet, choked _Tasha_ will clue Phil in. Loki and New York only make him stutter out one word, and every time it happens Phil regrets letting Thor take his brother back to Asgard.

If Clint had put an arrow through Loki's eye socket, he'd sleep better.

"It's okay, I'm here." Phil grabs the blankets Clint kicked off during his nightmare and pulls them up again, easing his partner to lie down before he tucks them around him.

Clint's body temperature did actually drop when he dreamt about being taken over by Loki, and it scared them both. Nobody knew what the tesseract actually did to take people over, and nobody knew what lasting effects it might have. They went weeks without thinking about it until the nightmares started up, and then they'd get scared all over again.

It was stress Clint didn't need, not when he already couldn't trust his own mind half the time.

"Clint, sweetheart." Phil puts his hand on the side of Clint's neck, gently getting his attention. "Do you know where you are?"

"N-New York." Clint's slowly coming back to Earth, but the shaking hasn't calmed yet.

At least he's responding to his name. Sometimes he gets too far into nightmares and he'll only respond to Barton, and he'll call Phil _sir_ and look at him blankly. He joked once that he'd call his autobiography _Hawkeye: My Life as a Weapon_ , and Phil thinks of that uncomfortably when he sees that blankness in his partner's eyes. There's damage there that he's responsible for, and it's only determination that stops him feeling guilty.

"New York, that's right. Where are we in New York?"

"T-Tony's place. Apartment. Our apartment."

They'd moved into the Tower permanently after what had happened last year, after Clint had almost killed himself by accident (he still insists it was an accident). It was better to be around people they trusted, and they could always lock their floor if they wanted to keep the world out. Despite his awkwardness at times, Clint was a social animal. He'd rather be around people than not, even if that sometimes meant just perching in the corner of a lab or the gym when he didn't really want to talk.

"Our apartment. We're home, we're safe." Phil carefully takes Clint's shaking hand and moves it under his t-shirt, letting him feel the scar that had been left by Loki's sceptre. "We're okay."

Clint runs his fingertips over the ridge of tissue and nods, jerkily. His breathing finally starts to level out, and he relaxes against the pillow as much as he can. When he's calm enough to be left, Phil goes to the kitchen and grabs him a glass of water, helps him sit up again to drink some.

"Sorry, Phil." He always apologises, even though his partner tells him he doesn't have to. Phil just shakes his head and kisses Clint's temple, feeling warm skin again with relief.

"Are you okay?" Phil asks quietly, setting the glass on the nightstand and gently pushing Clint to lie down. "You haven't had one of those for a while."

"Steve was talking about the Battle, today. Some interview he did or something." Clint lets his eyes slip closed, feeling exhausted and wired at the same time. Twitchy, restless. He's going into mania, great. That'll be easy to hide. "S'probably just that."

"Are you taking your meds right?" Phil lies down again, curling up with him just enough that Clint doesn't feel pinned down. "Sometimes that messes with your head."

"I, um, I missed a dose yesterday morning." Clint lies, quickly.

The best lies are closest to the truth, and being that he hasn't been taking his meds at all, it is _technically_ true that he missed a dose. Even if he's been missing all his doses.

"Be careful with yourself." Phil doesn't chide him, doesn't tell him off, just presses a kiss to his bare shoulder in encouragement. "You're important, I need you to be okay."

"Tell Tony to stop getting Jarvis to hassle me when I'm in the bathroom, then." Phil snorts at that, and Clint knows they're okay. He can pass off missing a dose as being distracted, no problem.

It's when the mania kicks in that he's worried about.

He doesn't want to be going through swings again, not at all, but he feels like _him_ again since he stopped taking the pills. Sure, he feels that looseness rattling behind his eyes sometimes, and sometimes he catches Tony watching him a little closer than usual, but he doesn't think anyone's caught on yet. He feels alive again, clear, and he'll take the swings if he can keep feeling like that.

That's what he thinks, anyway. It's not until the swing kicks in full-force that he realises he might have been wrong.


End file.
